Week 25: Day - To - Day Painting Biting Our Own Teeth Part 1
In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart. Blaise Pascal
A note about these blogs: in my daily life I maintain various practices to help me detach from the control of the ego. My active practices include meditation, capturing images of morning light and art making. I would add to this list the reading, thinking and writing of these blogs. Art and daily life are one and the same, for me. The musings and writing about these spiritual topics are intermingled with my art practice. Last week, I wrote about the two aspects of our consciousness, the ego and the soul. This week I am beginning an essay about one ego defense mechanism that limits our perspective and prevents us from being truly present to our lives. I’ve been thinking for a while now about the stories we tell ourselves. This storytelling is part of our socialization within our birth family, at a very young age we learn to call ourself by a name and we learn the family stories and our place in them. Our ego identity is formed as we learn to identify ourselves by classifications such as age, gender, role, race, religion and nationality. As we mature, we develop narratives to defend that understanding of where we fit in the world and we distill our experiences through stories that reinforce that ego identity. In all these pieces from the last week in November there is a subtle level of formlessness. This formlessness underlies all form. While all of the pieces consist of marks in an all over patterning, the first three display a vortex of marks that seem to originate from a center. All are fragments which, again indicate a greater whole, a totality of existence.
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. Alan Watts
When try to exert control over events over which we have no objective control by telling ourselves stories we repress the emotional reaction to that event. Someone says something to you that upsets you, your reaction may be a story that defends your status, labeling the action as bad and stating how wrong that person is to do that. From there, you may spin along to how that person continually does these mean and unfair things, how self interested or how stupid that person is. In all of this, we miss what is actually happening. The green gold and blue colors are here in the opposite proportion to the previous day's work. There is a plunging in to the work in these daily sessions. I engage at a level of precognitive awareness as I work.
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. Alan Watts
When we use stories to exert control events over which we have no objective control to protect our ego we repress the emotional reaction to that event. Someone says something to you that upsets you, your reaction may be a story that defends your status, labeling the action as bad and stating how wrong that person is to do that. From there, you may spin along to how that person continually does these mean and unfair things, how self interested or how stupid that person is. In all of this, we miss what is actually happening. Limiting the colors in this one to those also the two above, this is a further exploration of size, shape and direction of marks creating depth and motion.
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. Alan Watts
This painting has a shift in tonality and the marks are larger and less compact, the movement seems slowed and more diffuse.
Particulars seem to most open us up to universals. “Thisness” is the actual spiritual doorway to the everywhere and the always, much more than concepts. Incarnation is always specific and concrete, here and now, like this bread and this wine, and this ordinary moment, or this half-crazy person right in front of me. Richard Roh
These stories not only protect our opinion of ourselves but get elaborated with values we attribute to ourselves.
For example, “ I need to go to the studio now ( internal, subjective control story sounding like an external objective story) because I am an artist ( identity story) even though I don’t feel like it, because I’m disciplined ( story and inferred value) . While these paintings all seem to be variations on the same theme, each has an individual composition. The balance achieved by the arrangement of the light and dark values of color result in a snapshot, a moment in time and space. Again, swirling movement that seems erratic like Brownian motion. The white page is an active element.
Our attachment to our stories can be pernicious. There are stories that are actually making us miserable. “He did not call because he can not be bothered, I mean so little to him.” We can no longer distinguish between what has happened and the spin we have put on what happened. Other times we re-traumatize ourselves, retelling historical tales of tragedy, we relive the hurt and shame. This is an ego defense gone wrong. When we think about it this way it seems like a terrible waste of time and energy. If you develop awareness of these stories, you can begin to see the negative impacts to your happiness, your curiosity, your growth. More on how to recognize and curtail the storytelling next week.